The Biden administration is canceling $5.8 billion in student loans still held by students who attended Corinthian Colleges.
Hundreds of thousands of students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges will automatically get their federal student loans canceled, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.
According reports, anyone who attended anyone of the Corinthian Colleges from its founding in 1995 to its collapse in 2015 will get their federal student debt erased. This will amount to the elimination of $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single loan discharge in Education Department history, according to the agency, according to news reports.
“As of today, every student deceived, defrauded and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep.”
Those who have a remaining balance on their Corinthian debt will also get refunds on payments they have already made, Education Department officials said. But the action does not apply to loans that have already been paid off in full, according to the Associated Press and other news outlets.
Corinthian was one of the nation’s largest for-profit college companies, with more than 100 campuses across the country and more than 110,000 students at its Everest, WyoTech and Heald schools. The company shut down in 2015 amid widespread findings of fraud, according to AP.